Typically, goods are provided to an ultimate user by the shipment of the goods from one location, such as from a manufacturer, to a stocking distributor where the goods are entered into the stocking distributor's inventory. Subsequently the goods are drawn from inventory and used to fill a customer's order, probably in combination with goods from the same or another source also drawn from inventory.
Often the stocking distributor's inventory of a certain type of goods is exhausted, preventing the execution and shipping of an outstanding order requiring such goods. The execution of such an order is delayed if the goods necessary to fill an outstanding order are received by the stocking distributor, put into the distributor's inventory and then subsequently removed from inventory to fill an outstanding order.